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Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

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Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#461

Post by lmm »

beachy wrote: post #152
nopzor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope, that wouldn't be a modification to the AGPL-licensed grafana. you are free to do that. plus, dashboards and configuration are inherently ("source available"), so even if one were to consider them to be modifications (which they're not), you are already distributing them in source form ;-) [note: am co-founder/ceo of grafana labs]

How about an intelligent proxy that effectively intercepted and modified the queries that Grafana send to it's back end? Is that considered a modification? In my eyes it shouldn't be as no changes are needed to any Grafana code, it's all just networking. Interested to get your perspective.

That's probably a question for the courts (in terms of what constitutes a derivative work). If it's a generic proxy that just passes requests on then probably not. If it's deeply integrated with the grafana API then probably. Just like wrapper scripts around GPLed executables.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#462

Post by p1necone »

LukeShu wrote: post #321
kevincox wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to be shared to the user under the same license. So any user could publish the changes publicly.

Sure, but there might be out-of-band reasons for users to not do that. For instance, grsecurity will sell you a security-hardening-patched Linux kernel. You, as the user/customer, have the right to take those GPL patches, and share them publicly. But if you do so, grsecurity will blacklist you as a customer, and you won't be able to get any more patches from them.

This just seems like a blatant violation of the license on grsecuritys part. The license requires them to allow people to share the code.

"Technically you could share the code, and then we'll blacklist you" isn't letting people share the code, "technically" their customers can do anything.

This sounds like the reasoning of a petulant elementary school kid, not a professional security company.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#463

Post by lmm »

hnick wrote: post #452
lmm wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on whether a court considers it to legally be a derivative work or not. Some (but not all) circuits apply the "Abstraction, Filtration, Comparison Test", under which thin wrappers should make no difference. Other courts might have their own ways of deciding. The whole area is murky and untested, mainly because companies haven't really hammered out the cases in court.

How is the court venue decided? Is it based on where the copyright holder is based? That just adds a whole other layer of murky, now I can decide whether or not to infringe based on where the project is headquartered :)

Apparently not, it's "either (1) in the district “where the defendant resides” or (2) in the district “where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.”" That's US specific of course.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#464

Post by CaptainOSS »

hitekker wrote: post #448
CaptainOSS wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they talk about Kibana in their Q&A: https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/qa-with-our-ceo-on-relic...

Relevant section copypasted below: > If Kibana had been an AGPL project, would Grafana even exist? Are we being hypocritical? > I asked Torkel, and he said that If Kibana had been an AGPL project, Grafana would likely have been AGPL from day one. > This is of course a hypothetical question, so it’s difficult to determine how that would have affected subsequent business decisions the company might have made. > Making…

But the point is that they acknowledge that they forked Kibana and why. It’s no different than if someone forks Apache code to form a proprietary software company. The permissive license contributed to the success of many companies. They further acknowledge that Apache based Grafana can be forked too, but they’re betting on themselves to continue to succeed long term by focusing on good software, branding and community. The GP’s point seemed to indicate that “no one” acknowledged the Kibana origins when in fact Grafana themselves have.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#465

Post by erik_seaberg »

moron4hire wrote: post #414
m4rtink wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, GPL is about freedom for the users , not necessarily for the developers.

How does freedom for the user-who-is-not-a-developer to change the source work, then? The FSF fundamentally assumes the user is a developer. Hell, look at the vast majority of the GNU software. I wouldn't say it's at all targeted at not-developer users.

The user could hire any developer, he doesn't have to live within the original author's roadmap.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#466

Post by zmmmmm »

hnick wrote: post #426
zmmmmm wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to split hairs the other answers don't: you specify you have modified Postgres. My answer is, it entirely depends if your application is considered a "derivative work" of Postgres. This hinges on a couple of things: - does your application directly include AGPL postgres code in any form (headers, binary, etc etc) to its own source or its own runtime process? - keep in mind, in answering the above, that your…

Doesn't it also depend to some degree on how much code sits between the user and AGPL code? IIRC AGPL was created to bypass a thin wrapper frontend type situation. I make a website that takes PDFs, it lets users extract pages. In the backend I'm just running a modified Ghostscript command line and sending back what it makes. From my discussions with other people, this type of direct coupling automation is what is int…

The key part of the AGPL is phrased:

> if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source

So note the "interacting with it remotely" language isn't specific to just a network connection. So a reasonable interpretation would absolutely be that your users are "interacting remotely" with the PDF tool in the scenario you describe, no matter how many thin layers you put in between.

So this then goes to the question of how a court would decide the boundary ... clearly the connectivity of the internet means nearly every computer and software on earth is theoretically linked by a network. So that is where they would look at how direct the interaction with the AGPL software was, and how critically and specifically dependent on that interaction your software is. If everything a user does gets transformed into a completely different form by the time it hits the AGPL software then they aren't interacting with it remotely - they are interacting with your software remotely and your software is interacting with the AGPL. Similarly, if you could trivially substitute the AGPL for something equivalent and the end user wouldn't notice, that would also argue they aren't really interacting with the AGPL software specifically.

Of course, nothing is really clear until it goes to court, but this my best understanding of current state.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#467

Post by lmm »

hitekker wrote: post #448
CaptainOSS wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they talk about Kibana in their Q&A: https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/qa-with-our-ceo-on-relic...

Relevant section copypasted below: > If Kibana had been an AGPL project, would Grafana even exist? Are we being hypocritical? > I asked Torkel, and he said that If Kibana had been an AGPL project, Grafana would likely have been AGPL from day one. > This is of course a hypothetical question, so it’s difficult to determine how that would have affected subsequent business decisions the company might have made. > Making…

> IMHO, his answer doesn't address the GP’s point; that the original, permissive license inherited from Kibana arguably enabled the growth & survival of Grafana.

Why's that? If Kibana had been AGPL and Grafana had been AGPL from day 1, how would the growth and survival of Grafana have been any different?

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#468

Post by clusterfish »

crazypython wrote: post #382
clusterfish wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like splitting hairs for ideological gain. You might as well describe freedom of movement as power to take someone else's job in another town, or freedom of speech as power to manipulate masses, or freedom to do an abortion as power over the unborn child. Which way the issues are framed says more about the author than the issue. Software has leverage (one developer, many users at low marginal cost) built-i…

> freedom of movement as power to take someone else's job in another town Freedom of movement is the power to exchange goods and services with anyone. > freedom of speech as power to manipulate masses Freedom of speech is only a freedom if it is accompanied by a potential hearer's freedom to block speech. Modern platforms do not let you choose what or who you want to hear. Freedom of speech without freedom to choose…

Quite a quantum leap there from proprietary licenses to "modern platforms".

You're free not to use Facebook, Twitter, et al, you know. There are other, open, platforms. And other closed ones that are decent. Use any of them if you want more control over what you read.

Don't fucking shame people for earning money writing good software. Most of us aren't building evil monopolies.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#469

Post by bostik »

ctvo wrote: post #242
bostik wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I want to disagree with you on the general principle (and gen220's sibling comment points out several really nice longer-term examples), I will certainly admit that you have a point. Cloud providers eating the margins, investing in streamlined operations and in general making the earlier on-prem consulting work less attractive has had an effect. But I do note that your examples are from quite a narrow sector. T…

> But I do note that your examples are from quite a narrow sector. TypeScript, Go and React are all languages. TypeScript is a nice facade over JavaScript, and React is ... well, a very powerful DSL.[ß] > ß: Our frontend team will probably want to roast me for that one, but there isn't much visible JS left in modern React code. Not for my eyes, at least. Can you clarify what you're talking about here with regards to…

There is JS/TS in the codebase, but a surprisingly large fraction of the UI manipulation logic doesn't bear resemblance to either.

I base my opinion on my own interpretation: for me modern React looks a lot like the offspring of QML and a flavour of Lisp.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#470

Post by linuxhansl »

I think this is a step in the wrong direction.

Open source is about an open community, open contributions, the multiplier you get from contributions from multiple companies. That way open source is a win-win. Companies benefit from each other's contributions.

Once you have free and non-free tiers or need restrictive licensing it is already broken. The incentives no longer align.

I'm being paid in part to work on the open source projects that we utilize for our service(s). Some of those we started, some of those we're contributing to, but we _own_ none of them. We handed them off to external entities (Apache and others) for governance and we actively encourage others to participate. And, yes, some of those are used by Amazon, and we welcome their contributions to the code.

Single support companies that use the popularity and reach of permissive licenses for profit that then turn around and bemoan the fact that their licenses are too permissive are disingenuous.

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